The door opened and a man’s arm came out and reached for the top of the frame, the way tall men do getting out of a low car, and on that wrist, for about a second and a half, there was a watch with a green dial and a steel bracelet and a bezel that catches the light in a way that I had spent two months of 2021 learning about before I bought one.

I know that watch to a degree that is difficult to convey.

I know the lug width.

I know the third link from the clasp, which was removed at a shop on Clematis Street by a man named Yuri who told me the sizing was free and then charged me forty dollars.

I know that the crown is slightly stiff because it went in the ocean at Peanut Island in the July of 2022 and was serviced afterward and never came back quite the same.

I had given it to Christian for our first anniversary.

It cost more than I had ever spent on anything that was not a car, and I had been so pleased with myself that I had made him open it at the table.

So for about one second I sat in a white folding chair in a courtyard in Saint Augustine and thought: that man has Christian’s watch.

And then the rest of him came out of the car.

I have been asked, by four separate people, what that felt like, and all four of them wanted a physical answer — the floor tilting, the sound going away, that kind of thing.

I understand why.

It is what the moment is supposed to do.

What actually happened is that my hands got cold and my phone slid about an inch in my fingers and I caught it against my knee, and my first complete thought, in words, in the front of my head, was not a scream.

It was: the Savannah office.